The social media backlash is in full effect. Unsurprisingly, the push to stem the social networking tide is beginning in schools, where teachers and administrators can witness the ill effects of
online bullying firsthand. Needless to say, these efforts will fail utterly. The real question: is there a more effective way to deal with cyber-bullying? Can it be dealt with, at all?
This
week brings the case of Anthony Orsini, the principal of Benjamin Franklin middle school in Ridgewood, N.J., who sent all the parents of students at his school a strongly-worded email encouraging them
to forbid their children from joining social networks like Facebook, MySpace, or Formspring (a site whose sadomasochistic appeal seems to be built on allowing members to dish anonymous abuse to each
other).
Orsini was strident in his call, asserting "There is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! They are simply not
psychologically ready for the damage that one mean person online can cause, and I don't want any of our students to go through the unnecessary pain that too many of them have already experienced." He
went on: "Please do the following. Sit down with your child (and they are children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today!"
This response is well-meaning but draconian
... and doomed to fail. Like John Lithgow's preacher in "Footloose" telling the kids they can't dance or listen to rock music. But before addressing the impossibility of this vision, I'd like to note
that it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Social networks and related phenomena like massively multiplayer online role-playing games have obvious drawbacks -- but they also allow kids to
strike up friendships with peers, whom they've never met in person, all around the world. Do you really want to deprive kids of this amazing and unprecedented existential opening, and all it might
entail?
But anyway it doesn't matter because it's bound to fail. Here's why. While Orsini is probably right in saying that middle school students are still children, the students are bound to
disagree. They will certainly take issue with his statement that they have no reason to be on social networking sites; they have the same reason to be there as adults -- to socialize.
And
that's it, that's the whole game right there. Basically, this is shaping up to be just another in a long line of quixotic parental crusades, each of which failed before they even began -- against
masturbation, jazz, rock-n-roll, miniskirts and bikinis, premarital sex, drugs, Internet porn and gambling ... now social networking. Sorry: not a chance. The fact is, when parents attempt to halt a
popular pastime through coercive means, they simply transform it into a rallying cry for the next round of intergenerational struggle pitting youth against adults (well, except for "masturbation!"
maybe).
Ironically Orsini almost seems to acknowledge the impossibility of his vision in his email. In one part he recalls that "5 of the last 8 parents who we have informed that their child
was posting inappropriate things on Facebook said their child did not have an account. Every single one of the students had an account. 3 Students yesterday told a guidance counselor that their
parents told them to close their accounts when the parents learned they had an account. All three students told their parents it was closed. All three students still had an account after telling their
parents it was closed." In short: if you tell your kids to do this, they will probably lie to you and continue doing it anyway.
Of course, parents will view this as an affront to their
authority, and seek to employ other resources in their ill-starred attempts to squash social networking. But like anyone fighting a guerrilla war, they will be overwhelmed by the sheer effort involved
in policing a hostile native population.
For example, Orsini advises "Let them know that you will be installing Parental Control Software so you can tell every place they have visited online,
and everything they have instant messaged or written to a friend." Really? Should they also let them know this is an idle threat? And even if they can spend a few hours every day playing Facebook FBI,
what if their kids start using code? It wouldn't be the first time -- remember decoder rings in boxes of cereal? -- and anyway the dialect of text abbreviations probably baffles many adults, no
encryption necessary.
Many parents will (rightly) balk at even stricter measures. For example, Orsini also advises "Over 90% of all homework does not require the internet, or even a computer.
Do not allow them to have a computer in their room, there is no need." I would guess most conscientious parents are aware that computers and the Internet -- while potentially dangerous -- are also
tremendously empowering tools for doing good stuff. Like books and cars, they may take children unexpected places, but that's part of their power. And what's to prevent them from using their friends'
computers of mobile devices?
I don't claim to have an answer to online bullying. But I do feel it's a mistake to confuse a morally neutral medium -- an inanimate technology -- with
well-established human behaviors that are as timeless as they are ugly.